The other day I read a fascinating article about a Canadian guy who figured out how to determine whether scratch-off lottery tickets would be winners… without scratching them off. He decided not to take advantage of his discovery, because he realized he made more money as a statistician then he would have made taking advantage of the flaw. When he tried to tell the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, they thought he was some crackpot and ignored him. Finally, he got their attention when he sent them 20 tickets with predictions of their outcomes—he was right on 19 out of 20 of them. The article mentioned the names of a few U.S. based companies that work in the scratch-off lottery games, and I instantly wondered whether they had any internship. One of those companies is Scientific Games, which is headquartered in New York, NY but appears to be operationally based in Alpharetta, GA. Lotteries in the U.S. are a $50 billion market, and Scientific Games is “the primary instant ticket provider for 8 of the top 10 U.S. lotteries.” It may not seem as though there is a lot of room for innovation in lottery games, but Scientific Games has consistently proved otherwise.
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behavioral science,
business development,
casino,
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lottery,
New York,
product development,
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science
Have you ever realized that you were being marketed to? I don’t mean watching tv and seeing an ad that makes you want to buy something. I mean getting a creepy feeling like somebody is watching you, but instead they’re getting inside your head to sell you on something. The beauty of marketing is that you usually don’t realize it’s happening, but when you do, it’s scary. You wouldn’t normally associate this kind of thing with a non-profit, but when I came across The Harmony Institute, I was both intrigued and freaked out. They’re a New York City based organization that uses “cutting-edge scientific research with film, television and new media experiences to help [their] clients deliver narratives that modify behavior and influence change.” Is it just me, or does that sound a little weird?
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Tagged as:
advocacy,
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Internships,
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